Nokia, in collaboration with Keysight Technologies, has successfully completed end-to-end testing of Ultra Ethernet Traffic (UET) across its high-performance data center switching platforms, including the Nokia 7220 Interconnect Router (IXR) and 7250 IXR. This milestone demonstrates Nokia’s compatibility with the Ultra Ethernet Consortium (UEC) Specification 1.0 and reinforces its leadership in building extreme-scale, low-latency, and lossless networks tailored for AI-driven data centers.

As AI continues to transform the digital landscape, data center operations are undergoing a fundamental shift. Real-time AI training and inference require ultra-low latency, while even minor packet loss can disrupt training workflows and delay results. Moreover, the growing demand for massive bandwidth pushes existing network infrastructures to their operational limits.

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To address these challenges, UEC Specification 1.0 introduces the UET layer, specifically designed to meet the complex requirements of HPC and AI workloads. Since Ethernet dominates global data networks, UET provides a compelling solution for modernizing AI data centers by offering standardized architectures and best practices. As an active UEC member, Nokia remains committed to implementing UET as a cost-effective, interoperable, and highly compatible solution within AI and HPC ecosystems.

During the testing, Keysight’s AresONE 800GE-8P-QDD-M platform generated UET traffic over 800 GE interfaces across the Nokia 7220 IXR-H5 and 7250 IXR-10e platforms, which ran the SR Linux Network Operating System (NOS). The trials also evaluated Remote Direct Memory Access over Converged Ethernet (RoCEv2) and Data Center Quantized Congestion Notification (DCQCN), confirming that Nokia’s solutions can support multiple advanced protocols simultaneously. This testbed highlighted the openness, flexibility, and commercial readiness of Nokia’s AI-ready portfolio.

Rudy Hoebeke, Vice President of Software Product Management at Nokia, emphasized the significance of this achievement: “AI is changing the game when it comes to expected performance in AI data center networks. This successful demonstration with Keysight of UET traffic over Nokia’s 7220 IXR and 7250 IXR product families demonstrates our commitment to the UEC and provides clear evidence that Nokia is a leader in this evolution, with one of the industry’s most robust portfolios for HPC/AI-ready data center networking.”

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Ram Periakaruppan, Vice President and GM of Network Applications & Security at Keysight, added: “This is an inflection point in the networking world as a new standard is adopted for AI networking. Ultra Ethernet is enabling the next-generation scale-out fabrics that will power 100K+ AI clusters with innovation from PHY/Link layer to Transport and application layer. This test with Nokia represents another significant milestone in the evolution of networking for AI. At Keysight, we’re helping shape this standard by co-leading UEC working groups and ensuring specifications are practical, verifiable, and interoperable. With our early interoperability efforts, we’re accelerating adoption and unlocking the next wave of innovation.”

With this successful collaboration, Nokia and Keysight not only showcase the future of AI-ready networking but also provide enterprises with immediate access to a UEC-compliant, high-performance data center solution capable of meeting the demands of next-generation AI workloads.

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